


Unexpected, What You Did to My Heart

by locketofyourhair



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Jealousy, M/M, Obliviousness, background Sole/Hancock, open season ending to Nuka World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21985519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair
Summary: Deacon knows three things: you can’t trust anyone, people can’t keep secrets, and you will always have your heart broken.Which is why it's a terrible idea when he and MacCready start sleeping together and then maybe, possibly, Deacon starts to get attached.
Relationships: Deacon/Robert Joseph MacCready
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	Unexpected, What You Did to My Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BishopDeaconCardinal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BishopDeaconCardinal/gifts).



> Happy holidays! This idea came to me four days ago, and it's a super secret gift. It's also unbeta'ed at the moment as I'm secretly five and cannot wait to give people things. 
> 
> Title is from "At the Beginning" from Anastasia.

Deacon knows three things: you can’t trust anyone, people can’t keep secrets, and you will always have your heart broken. He’s learned those lessons all the hard way, particularly the first. Over and over again, starting with Barbara, and again when he watched Songbird blow herself away with a grenade because she was swarmed by synths and bleeding too bad to get away. She was 15. 

He’s almost forty and he’s still alive, still trying to make up for all the people who should be here instead of him. Nora helps, in her way, because she seems unable to judge anyone, even fucking Pickman and Gage. 

When Gage started coming around, stuff changed. Hancock left Sanctuary to head back to Goodneighbor, grumbling about slavery. Preston moved to the Castle. Deacon stopped traveling with Nora, especially as she spent more time in Nuka World. 

Then MacCready stopped working for her, starting to take little contracts instead. He didn’t comment on it, but Deacon could tell he was just as unhappy about Nuka World as the rest of them. 

He still doesn’t know how that had gone from an awkward comment on how much MacCready had grown as a person to a screaming match to fucking on the floor in one of the blown out houses that no one had bothered to claim, particularly with his knees fucking screaming at him because he’s not a young man anymore. 

Worse, it didn’t stop after they realized it was a fucking terrible idea. MacCready has a kid; Deacon has the Railroad. They can’t be together, and they both know it. 

Except somehow, that made it better. That they could find each other in the afternoon, when MacCready had come back from a hunting run for the settlement or Deacon had just come back from an op, and they could go back to that quiet house and just have each other. 

It’s stupid to find it charming that Robert has ginger eyelashes and his hair gleams reddish brown when he takes his hat off in the fields. It’s really stupid to let himself to caught staring at MacCready when he takes off his duster and overshirt in the heat, and by Piper no less. 

He knows it’s a problem when Piper knocks her elbow against his and murmurs, “He’s kind of cute, when you can’t hear his attitude.”

Deacon doesn’t blush. He used to, with his original face, but that peaches-and-cream complexion is long gone, ruined by too many surgeries. He just lights a cigarette and smirks at her. “No comment,” he says.

She jabs him in the kidney but leaves it. 

-

He knows MacCready is going to break his heart after a few months. Nora is still off in Nuka World, but Curie’s back. And you don’t have to be a super spy to know that MacCready thinks Curie is beautiful and special. 

Deacon digs out Tommy Whispers’ old gun from Nora’s stash and starts shooting old beer bottles from the fence. Because he can hear Curie’s laughter and MacCready’s voice. He doesn’t have the ability to just go still like nothing matters but the headshot like a sniper does, but his hands are pretty steady. It never hurts to practice. 

And if MacCready comes and makes fun of him, makes fun of him for missing one of the bottles? It’s not a big deal. He hands the little pistol to MacCready and tries not to look too happy that MacCready and says, “Do better, hotshot.”

MacCready kisses him as he takes the gun, every time. They’re out in the open air, nothing but the sun above them, and Deacon should hate that he feels like the heroine in the old pictures, like just a kiss from MacCready can make him weak at the knees, kick one of his feet up in the air. 

He doesn’t hate it at all, particularly the way MacCready smiles up at him when they separate. “Set ‘em up and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

-

Deacon knows he’s bad news. He destroys everything good in his life. There’s no doubt in his mind that Barbara would still be alive if they’d never met. He thinks that if he’d been better at his job, if he’d been less distracted with the stories of the vaultie tearing her way through the Commonwealth, then he might have been able to see the writing on the wall, gotten more people out of Switchboard. 

He knows that it’s his fault when MacCready takes a tire iron to the stomach. Hardware Town was supposed to be empty, and they’d come alone, just to check out the rumors of gunners in the area. Deacon had to check the route for packages; MacCready loves kicking in gunner heads. It was supposed to be easy. 

Hardware Town isn’t abandoned. Worse, Deacon’s reloading his rifle when the raider lunges at him, and MacCready had a perfectly safe vantage point. He could have been fine and working on killing this asshole with the assault rifle. 

Instead he was blocking the blow meant for Deacon with his own body. 

“Shit,” Deacon snarls and he blows away the raider, kills two more as MacCready slumps against him. 

MacCready still gets the leader, even slumped against Deacon. “Jerks,” he says, and he’s smiling, except there’s a trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth. 

There’s blood seeping into Deacon’s jeans as he pulls out from under MacCready’s body. The tire iron is still laying across his stomach, and he can see the blood seeping outward, staining his clothing and the dirty floor under them.

“Bladed,” Deacon says, and his lips are numb. He can’t feel his fingers. 

“Yeah,” MacCready says, and he sounds so calm, like he isn’t bleeding out. 

If MacCready hadn’t put himself between Deacon and the blow, she’s have hit Deacon’s spine, maybe managed to get it into his lungs. He’d be drowning in his own blood. 

Deacon stares at MacCready’s mouth, the way the blood catches in his goatee. He wants to scream at him; he wants to shake him and tell him that Deacon doesn’t have anyone. He could have died here, and. I one would have lost much. The Railroad would continue. Nora has a dozen other friends. 

He doesn’t have a kid, for fuck’s sake. 

But he doesn’t say any of that. He just stares and opens his mouth and closes it. 

It’s only when MacCready reaches out and grabs his wrist, fingers sticky with blood, that he comes back to himself. “Shit, Robert.”

“Stimpacks?” 

MacCready nods to their packs, and he’s touching Deacon with one hand and keeping the tire iron still with the other. “I’ll pull the blade out, you stick me, and then you go get someone from Diamond City, okay?”

Deacon nods, dragging out two stimpacks to start. “I found a blood pack too, before we got jumped,” he says, and his entire mouth feels odd, like his tongue has swollen. “I can get that set up. 

“Okay.” He sounds so calm, even as his blue eyes start to go dull. “On three?”

Deacon feels like he’s going to shake apart, but he nods. MacCready needs him. He won’t let anyone else die for him, not for his sloppiness. Especially not in a fucking old world hardware store. 

MacCready’s breathing seems to go reedy as he counts down, and the sound of the tire iron makes as MacCready rips it back out of his body is going to haunt Deacon for years. But they manage it. He pushes two stimpacks into MacCready’s side and as soon as his skin is knit together, Deacon sets up the blood pack. 

He has to get help, but damned if he doesn’t do a thorough sweep of the store before he goes and grabs Nick, grabs Dr Sun and Arturo. He half expects to come back to the store on fire, but MacCready is fine, stills in the bathroom where Deacon locked him in, still holding his rifle like he really will kill anyone who comes close. 

Dr Sun begins to check Robert over, to get him safe to move, and Deacon doesn’t realize how much of a mess he must be until Nick is squeezing his shoulder with his wire hand and murmuring, “He’ll be okay. Sun’s too stubborn to let him die here.”

And it’s only because Robert is looking at him over Sun’s shoulder that Deacon can keep himself from falling apart, from letting himself take a moment to cry. Nick wouldn’t judge, but MacCready sure as shit would. 

-

Deacon’s never pretended that he’s particularly smart. He stays with MacCready while he recuperates because he’s an idiot. Because he does break down against Nick once Sun has MacCready floating on a cocktail of Med-X and Buffout, to keep his health up and to dull the pain. 

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” MacCready slurs. “‘M okay. Won’t stop me.”

And Deacon is positive that MacCready isn’t seeing him when he mumbles, “Not saying love you because then I’ll die.”

Deacon is an idiot because he hangs out by MacCready’s bedside and he knows that MacCready meant Lucy. That, of course, is who MacCready would see as he fought to stay alive, the woman who gave her life so he could escape with their son. 

But he thinks, maybe. Maybe he could mean Deacon. They don’t talk about feelings. They fuck and hang out. MacCready is his partner more than Nora these days, even though MacCready doesn’t give a shit about synth freedom. (Give a merc free license to sell all the institute rifles they pick up, and he’ll take a job. He doesn’t even complain when Deacon pockets all the ammo for HQ.)

MacCready gets better; MacCready never brings it up again. He doubles down on his corny jokes that shouldn’t make Deacon smile, moments where MacCready forgets to be all attitude and snark to let the enormous dork slip through. Deacon shouldn’t be fond of the way he fucking giggles every time he breaks out “it’s _too_ quiet,” but he grins like the goddamned sun everytime. 

Deacon feels like a fool when MacCready starts bunking with him, and they don’t even pretend that they need two beds. MacCready and Sturges put together one of the old double bed frames back together and they slap two mattresses down. 

He shouldn’t let MacCready flop down on a refurbished bed and just give him that goddamned grin, legs spread just enough that Deacon knows what it will feel like to lie between them. “Maybe if I’m nice, I can get a trader to part with some curtains,” MacCready says. 

The window in the room is small and overlooks the creek between Sanctuary and the road towards the old vault. No one should be peeking, but it sounds so domestic, so much like they’re making this house their goddamned home, that Deacon has to kiss him to shut him up. 

And maybe show MacCready how grateful he is for a proper bed, for something gentler on his joints than cold cement floor. 

-

Nora comes back with Gage and with a nasty scar along her jaw. It’s easier to pay attention to the way Gage leers after her than it is to watch MacCready and Curie. 

Deacon doesn’t like being jealous, and he knows he has not actual reason _to_ be jealous. MacCready might hang around with Curie during the day, but he’s in Deacon’s bed at night. He kisses Deacon good morning when the sun just begins to crest over the hill, when he has to get up to check the game trails, because winter is coming and MacCready is a damn good hunter. 

It’s still hard not to feel like all of that can evaporate, particularly when Curie laughs and calls, “Ro-bear,” in a voice that carries through the entire settlement. 

MacCready always grins, despite the fact that he doesn’t really enjoy people calling him Robert, let alone a snazzy French pronunciation. She helps him skin the radstag or the mole rats, depending on what he caught that day. 

Deacon doesn’t know why he burns with anger and fucking shame when he watches Curie and MacCready laughing and covered in blood up to their elbows, but he does. Maybe it’s that MacCready lets Curie see him stripped of his layers. Maybe it’s that Robert flushes every time his name is said with that terrible French lilt. 

“In Nuka World, they’d tell you to mark him, if you worry about him gettin’ stolen,” Gage says, just appearing beside him. Deacon feels his face shut down. 

“Shame I don’t carry shock collars on my person.” Deacon doesn’t bother hiding his glare. Gage knows he isn’t welcome. 

Gage just smiles. “Nah. No slave collars. Just a little scar maybe. Dixie has one on her collarbone from  
Nisha. Did it in front of everyone. Most romantic thing I’d seen in a good mile.”

Deacon doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know those names, and if public scarring is romantic, he doesn’t want to know them. He’ll remember them - because that’s what he does - and he’ll probably ask Nora about them, but aside from that and his notes on the Nuka World raiders for Dez, he doesn’t want to know any more. 

“I’m just saying, cute kid like that? Someone’s gonna take him and make ‘em theirs eventually.”

Deacon lets his hackles go up, because it’s easier to be pissed at Gage than it is to think about the fact that he and MacCready aren’t anything that needs defining. Most of Nora’s crew bunks up now. Cait and Piper, Danae’s room is technically in the house Preston shares with Sturges and Mama Murphy. Hancock, when he was here, shared with Nora, in the same house that he and MacCready now use. 

“We’re not fucking animals. We don’t claim people here. If you don’t understand that, maybe Nora shouldn’t bring you around Sanctuary anymore.” He shoves Gage away from him, well aware that Gage has four inches and at least forty pounds of muscle on him. 

And Gage is a killer, like Deacon used to razz MacCready for being. 

So he’s not surprised when Gage knocks him down, falling on him with heavy armor and knuckled gauntlets. What surprises him is how quickly he fights back, using all the nasty tricks you learn from being a skinny kid in a gang and then a spy going up against a shadow organization. 

Gage at least feels pain when Deacon ignores the throbbing pain in his chest and jaw to grab the side of Gage’s head and try to push in the man’s good eye. He bellows and clocks Deacon so hard that his glasses crack and his nose feels like it’s been shoved into his skull. 

There’s yelling in the distance, but he can’t look away from Gage. His stupid armor keeps Deacon from landing a kidney shot, but he doesn’t give in. Gage is a killer, sure, but Deacon has faced down coursers. He helped Nora retake Ticon when coursers cleated it. Gage isn’t even the scariest thing he’s fought this week. 

Deacon’s blood roars in his ears but he feels Gage shift, knows he’s going to pull a knife from somewhere, and he snarls, “You can’t even fight fair, huh?”

“Dead men fight fair, asshole,” Gage spits back. 

And then there’s a gunshot over their heads, same time as Deacon sees a rifle butt slam hard into the side of Gage’s face. He hears the chambering of a round and more shouting. There’s blood in his eyes and he can’t see. There are guns, and that’s a whole lot worse than Gage’s hidden combat knife. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” someone says, and there is a cloth pushing against his face. It’s Piper. This close, he can smell the ink of her old creaky press, the old clove cigarettes she’s likes. 

Gage is hollering, and when Deacon looks up, Sturges is pulling Gage back. Nora is yelling, and Deacon thinks he has a concussion because it’s hard to hear, just ringing and Piper because she’s so close. 

But he notices the rifle in MacCready’s hands, the way he has the barrel just behind Gage’s head. At this range, with the .308 or a .50, a skull will just pop off. 

“Robert, hey,” he says, and his voice sounds weird, wrong, and even that much hurts. 

“Shush,” and somehow Curie is here, cool hands on his skin. “You have broken your jaw, monsieur. You must let me set it before I heal you.”

Even with his head ringing and blood dripping from a cut on his forehead, he can see MacCready’s hand flexing like he’s going to pull the trigger on Gage. 

It’s only because Nora steps in, her gun still naked in her hand. She says something, and her voice is just as distorted and awkward as Sturges’, as Gage’s now that he’s snapping back. 

Robert says something too, his lips pulled back to show his teeth. Deacon can hear the furious roar in his tone if not the actual words. He looks like he might be shaking. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Nora says, and that much he makes out. She’s speaking softly, gently, like she’s worried that MacCready will spook and pull the trigger. “No one will let that happen.”

“There’s a way to make sure,” MacCready snarls back. 

“If you pull that trigger, you’d only be hurting him. This close, with a concussion? What is that going to sound like!” She puts her hand on the barrel of MacCready’s gun, and it’s only then that he takes his finger off the trigger, dropping it into a resting position. 

Curie jabs him with Med-X before she touches his jaw, and he shudders at the feel of his bones shifting. He thinks he hears Robert snarl, “What the fuck is he even doing here?” But it’s like his entire head is under water, and Curie gives him just a bit more chems so the world is hazy and then dark.

Later, he’ll wake up in the bed they’re sharing with MacCready sitting next to him, in one of the banged up metal chairs from the kitchen. MacCready will have drifted off, his hand on the mattress by Deacon’s and it’s too easy to link their fingers together. 

He will think he sees MacCready smile in his sleep, but his brain is clogged full of chems and stimpacks. 

-

Gage leaves and Nora promises she won’t bring him back, and things settle back into an easy normalcy. They can ignore reports that apparently Nuka World raiders have taken that weird cottage and the Kingsport lighthouse. 

Nora hasn’t been back to Sanctuary to ask what the fuck she’s thinking, and they try to move on. 

MacCready spends a lot of time with Curie and Sturges, and Deacon hates that the wonders. He knows Sturges is spoken for, but Preston hasn’t been back for two months now. He’s been moping, and even good men make bad decisions when they’re sad and drunk. 

Except there’s still Curie, and Deacon hates himself for burning with jealousy when she laughs at MacCready’s jokes or has him help her lift things. She’s stronger than a human, but balance is still a thing. So when they decide to set up laser turrets on a roof, of course she needs MacCready’s help to lift the generator. She can’t go up the ladder and manage something that unwieldy. 

And, worse, two days later, MacCready comes into their house with a huge pile of tangled yarn and a slightly manic look in his eye. “Can you help me with this?”

Deacon looks at the mass of cream-colored string. “I’m pretty sure scissors would do better.”

MacCready makes a scoffing sound and pulls Deacon onto the ratty sofa beside him. “Curie wants to learn how to knit,” he says, pulling up Deacon’s left hand and tying a loose loop around his ring finger. “And I found some decent stuff when I helped Piper raid a craft store for ink.”

Deacon watches MacCready begin to loop yarn around his hand, untangling the mass bit by bit. “Who’s gonna teach her how? Murphy?”

MacCready snorts. “I don’t think she can. Nora has her off chems, but she’s still loopy as fu-heck.” He is quiet as he loops the yarn again. “I, uh, knit. I learned in Little Lamplight. It gets cold in the caves, and I was on watch a lot. So long as no mungos came up or mutants from Murder Pass, things were pretty boring.”

He looks at MacCready’s neck. His scarf is tossed away somewhere in the house, with his hat and bandoliers. “You made that rag you wear around your neck!”

“Hey, it’s nice,” MacCready snaps back, but his eyes are sparkling. “Nah, Gingersnap made that for me, when I aged out. She didn’t want me to forget them, and I like green. So.” He shakes his head, and there’s a fondness in his voice that Deacon would have be crazy to miss. “She was the second best sniper we had, so I trained her to keep watch. Taught her to knit, and that’s what she made.”

He’s still smiling soft and fond as he wraps the yarn around Deacon’s hand. Deacon reaches out with his free hand to tip Robert’s face up, so he can see his eyes. They’re always so clear, and Deacon can read them like a goddamned book. 

“You miss them,” he murmurs. 

“I worry about them, and yeah. I do. Sometimes I think about asking Red to get a message to Ginger. She’ll be sixteen in a year, you know. She’ll need a place to land, and I think she’d do okay here if the Minutemen can hold stuff down. I want to bring Duncan up here some day, once I have a home for him and I think we’re almost there.”

Deacon has yarn for Curie wrapped around his hand, and he can just see how nice it would be for MacCready to have a home for Duncan. He and Curie would be good parents, and there is no way that Ginger would be the last stray they’d take in. That Curie is a synth wouldn’t matter because MacCready attracts kids like he’s made of candy. Duncan would have a safe place to play. 

He clears his throat, and if he was a good man, he’d move out of his and MacCready’s room tonight, sleep in one of the bunk houses and then go back to living out of HQ. 

But he’s not a good man. So he lets MacCready wrap half a skein of yarn around his hand before he manages to get it all untangled, before he’s carefully taking the loop off his finger and taking it. 

MacCready’s ears are pink in the dying sunlight as he stands, holding the yarn like it’s something precious. “I need to get a lantern to finish this, I think,” he murmurs, before he’s tripping over himself to get out of the house, like there isn’t a lantern by their bed. 

There’s probably a lantern in Curie’s room too. 

Deacon maybe breaks into Nora’s alcohol reserves for himself, because he knew this was going to end from the moment he kissed MacCready. People like him don’t get love and friends. He’s worn the blood of people he loved enough times to know. It only ends in them walking away or dying. 

He just didn’t think watching someone you might love fall in love with someone else would hurt more than losing them outright. But then that’s why death by a thousand cuts was torture while decapitation usually is a one and done. 

And the moment he realizes that he’s thought about being in love with MacCready, he can’t stop thinking it. He wants to say it all the time, even though it’s better for everyone if he doesn’t. If he lets this pass. 

It doesn’t make waking up with Robert beside him any easier, but it also doesn’t stop him from kissing him awake either. 

-

Except, and this is when Deacon thinks he’s misjudged things, MacCready doesn’t seem to spend more time with Curie at all. Suddenly, he’s just sort of around where the magic of Sanctuary starts to happen. Nora has her workshop area all set up neatly under a tin roof, and Deacon doesn’t mean to pry except that for a week solid, he sees MacCready there. 

He knows that he isn’t being subtle about it, especially as he knows MacCready is damn good at helping assemble pipe weapons. More and more settlements are being taken over by the fuckheads from Nuka World - some crazy back water bog, Starlight Drive In, the raider outpost by Tenpines Bluff - and it makes sense to be sending more and more weapons out to the Minutemen settlements close by. He likes walking past the workshops and seeing Robert working over the weapons bench with his overshirt off and the muscles of his forearms tight as he fixes one last thing. 

He thinks he can watch MacCready tuck a pipe rifle into his shoulder and dry fire a hundred times, the muscles of his shoulders and back moving under his sweat-stained t-shirt. 

This isn’t helping him fall _out_ of love any. 

“You know, I have one of those instant cameras,” Piper drawls behind him, and he wants to wince. It’s one thing to know that someone like Nora can probably see every goddamned emotion on his face and another to realize Piper can see it. “I should go get it, so you could remember this, something to take with you on your super secret missions that never include reporters.”

She’s grinning at him, offering him a cigarette from her pack, and because he’s pretty sure she could hop over to MacCready right now and _tell him_ that he’s mooning like they are star crossed lovers, he takes one and offers her his lighter. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says breezily, and it’s a weak lie. 

She laughs, shaking her head, and he’s completely done for. She will never let this go. “Yep. No idea. This is just the best view in Sanctuary. Not the cute little stream that leads up to the cryo tomb, or the river that we find bodies in all the time. Right here.”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

She hums under her breath, but she doesn’t move away. Just stands beside him and smokes, occasionally shifting her feet. It sets Deacon’s teeth on edge. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says finally, because what is there to say? He knows he’s a damned lost cause. 

“Would you believe I’m not here to harass you?” Piper knocks his shoulder with her own and motions at the workshops. “I just happen to know a lost cause when I see one, because I like to come and see the sights too.”

She makes a vague motion towards the end of the workshops, to the chem station that’s purposefully set as far as possible from the weapons bench. Cait has white bottles all in a line, dish rags hanging out of her back pocket. Her hips move as if she’s dancing instead of just replenishing molotovs. She seems happy, relaxed, and it’s good to see, considering how far gone she was on chems when Deacon met her. 

“I don’t understand,” he says, but as soon as he does, he realizes he’s an idiot. “Cait?”

Piper flushes and looks away. “Tell anyone, and I’ll write an article about how you want to kidnap MacCready like he’s a fairy princess. I’ll interview people about it so everyone knows you’re gross over him.”

Deacon takes a long drag of his borrowed cigarette. “That’s gonna be awkward when he makes his move on Curie,” and Christ, he sounds bitter. He can’t help it. He rubs his eyes under his glasses. 

Piper lets out a loud bark of laughter. “You think... that he’s in love with Curie?”

“No.” He can’t say that. Not yet, at least. “He thinks she’s cute though. He’s going to teach her how to knit, and I think she’d be good for him, you know.”

Piper just stares for a moment and then flicks her cigarette away. “You’re so fucking stupid,” she says flatly, like she knows better. Like she didn’t just say that she’s stupid over Cait. 

And maybe it’s a little different because she and Cait have their own beds while Deacon wakes up with MacCready against his chest, but it’s not different enough to matter at the end of the day. 

“I’m not talking about this with you,” he says finally, turning on his heel to go back toward the crop fields or the turrets or anything other than watching Robert and Cait. 

He never does see Robert teach Curie how to knit, but he does see him knit eventually, in the little yard behind their shared house. He sits in the patio chairs by the campfire and works on a long tube of blue wool.

And if Deacon likes curling up beside him and listening to the click of needles against each other and Robert swearing when he drops a stitch? Well, no one can see them to judge. 

-

Nora comes back alone, and she has murder in her eyes. There’s blood soaking into her vault suit. MacCready and Piper at her side in a second as she collapses into their shared house. She has a cut on her forehead, matting her dark hair down. 

“I sent word to Danse and Hancock. They’ll be here in the morning, afternoon at the latest.”

MacCready pours her three fingers of bourbon and drops down on the couch beside Deacon, close enough that their hips touch. “So long as I get to kill Gage,” he says, and Piper tries to catch Deacon’s eye.

It’s been a while since he’s seen Nora in close quarters, but he’s never forgotten that smile of hers, when she’s made a decision and it’s going to be violent. He saw her smile like that at Rossalyn Chambers when she promised the doctor that she wouldn’t stop Covenant from their synth torture. 

She was still smiling like that when she put Deliverer against the good doctor’s head and blew her away. 

“Oh, Gage isn’t there anymore. The Overboss sent him and Shank to Murkwater Construction Site. She’s nice like that.” The glint in her eyes is evil. “And just after she helped the other gangs put down poor crazy Nisha.”

MacCready nods. “Do we hit the park first?”

Nora nods. “We can’t let the outposts getting word home, because I do not want the force of the gangs marching on our settlements. I want to have as little loss of innocent life as possible.” 

Deacon stares at the three of them, because he’s seeing a plan that no one clued him in on. Usually he doesn’t get left in the dark; he’s the one leaving people out. “Wait. What are we doing?”

“You didn’t think I’d leave a huge raider outfit on our doorstep forever did you?” Nora shrugs one shoulder and slugs back her alcohol. “I let them talk me through taking the park and killing the monsters, whatever. Then they got to help me kill some of the more troubling settlement locations, clear out some Children of Atom and a few raiders. Maybe some ferals. Now they’ve got a foothold here, so their numbers back home are just a little thin, you know?”

“She told us after Gage attacked you,” MacCready says, and he has his arm on the back of the couch. “I didn’t want you worrying until it was time to move.”

“Why would I worry? Danse, Hancock, and Nora can kill anything. Like I fucking hate the guy, but I wouldn’t bet against Danse facing down all three gangs.”

Nora’s smile is tight. “MacCready is coming too. He knows slave tech, from the Capital Wastelands. And we need a sniper up high to pick off the raiders as they run and panic.”

“Why aren’t you bringing everyone, then?” He looks at Piper. “I mean, none of us are super into slavery here.”

“Because I need some people here, because I don’t know how long this will take. Curie is going to the co-op, since it’s closest to the transport. We’re going to send the traders who are too sick there, to get them back on their feet. We can’t all just go, because what if the gunners realize that if they go fuck the Slog, no one will kick their faces in. Preston and Nick are ready to push out for the Castle, and you three are good. I’ll even leave my favorite Fatman if you need it.”

Deacon doesn’t like the plan, but he’s also never been to Nuka World. He has a sense that it’s huge, that there are incredibly sadistic gangs there. Nora has been there; she’s been living there. If she needs three people to back her up, she needs them. 

“It’ll be hard, but we’ll get it done. And then we push into their outposts.” MacCready is rubbing a thumb against Deacon’s shoulder. “And then I get to blow Gage away.”

“Awfully blood-thirsty, Robert,” Deacon murmurs. 

“He tried to kill you.” MacCready shrugs, like that’s enough. Like there haven’t been dozens that have tried to kill him and MacCready hasn’t seen a solid six of those attempts himself. 

Nora snorts and then pours herself more booze. “We’ll get it done,” she declares, and she downs the second glass, barely wincing. “But right now I’m getting a shower. John is going to try to get here early, talk shop.”

“That’s what we call it now? Shop?” Deacon leans away from MacCready to take her bottle. Their leader can’t have a hangover. 

“We call it ‘thank you, Robert, for putting a door on their room,’” MacCready offers, and the way he smiles at Deacon really isn’t fair, not if he’s leaving tomorrow. 

Piper clears her throat loudly. “Yeah, I guess we all need a night to tell our loved ones that we’ll miss them. Or those of us going to kill raiders tomorrow. I’m benched.”

MacCready pulls his arm away. “Subtle,” he says, and he’s tense suddenly. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nora offers, and she sets her glass down. “I’m sure if I told Cait that I need her help....”

Piper flips them both off as she leaves. 

And it should be fine, except suddenly there’s a weird charge in the air. He watches Nora and MacCready try to talk with their eyes and little signals: a tilt of Nora’s head, MacCready wrinkling his nose, and then Nora flaring her nostrils. Deacon thinks it might actually be a fight, particularly when Nora throws up her hands. 

“Fine, you handle it,” she says. “But I’m cleaning up and then you better hope this fancy door is sound proof.”

“Maybe _you_ better hope it’s soundproof,” MacCready shoots back darkly, but Nora is already halfway out the door. 

Deacon doesn’t often miss things, but he’s pretty sure that he’s missing something now. Even for MacCready and Nora, things are a little more obtuse and vague than he’s used to. 

Except after a minute, MacCready stands up and is pulling Deacon off the couch. “Come on, old man. Let’s take a walk.”

It’s dusk in Sanctuary, but there are enough lanterns and gas lamps going that it doesn’t seem so oppressive. And MacCready doesn’t let go of his hand as they walk, like this is something that they normally do. 

And he’s been entirely aware that this moment was coming.

Robert takes him out of Sanctuary, into newly repaired bridge. The sky is clear and the Red Rocket settlement glows behind them. It’s a beautiful spot, and this just makes it worse. 

“You don’t have to be nice about this,” he says, and his throat is tight. His voice is surprisingly steady. 

“What?” MacCready doesn’t drop his hand, brushing his thumb along Deacon’s knuckles. He looks down at the water. 

“I know, okay?” Deacon takes off his sunglasses and tucks them into the collar of his shirt. “It’s fine.”

“What?” Robert finally, finally pulls away and rubs his face. “You knew? Really?”

“It’s not like you’re subtle.” He hates that his hands shake as he takes a step back. “And I want you to be happy. You deserve that.”

His chest hurts, and he leans down to kiss Robert goodbye because he doesn’t think he can stay in Sanctuary right now. Maybe in time, after Nuka World he can come back and things won’t make him feel like he has a ripper inside his chest. 

And he means to pull away, but MacCready wraps his hand around Deacon’s wrist

MacCready turns his head to the side, and his nose wrinkles. It always makes him look younger than he is, strips some of that world weariness from his face. “Well, okay. I was going to try to be like... subtle, but fine.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, and he hates that he can’t keep his voice level, like this doesn’t matter. 

MacCready moves his hand to Deacon’s jaw, his thumb brushing over his lips. “Come on. Let me do this, okay? I know it’s not your thing, but no one can see us.”

Deacon would normally argue that everyone can see them, that they’re literally out in the open on a bridge where anyone can pass by them. “Okay,” he whispers. Whatever gets this over with. 

Except when MacCready steps back, he takes Deacon’s hand again. “I know that you’re not a big fan of gestures, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this. Because it’s a gesture.”

Deacon opens his mouth to protest that he doesn’t need anything from MacCready, but Robert keeps talking and won’t look at him. 

His hand is trembling around Deacon’s, and Deacon is starting to think that maybe he’s actually an asshole, because he’s had his fair share of “it’s not you, it’s me” or “I’ve found someone else” speeches and they don’t start with shaky laughs. 

“So. Eventually I decided, screw it. Go big or don’t bother, right?” Robert grins up at him. “But I should have known you caught on, you know? You’re so much better at being sneaky than me.”

MacCready turns his hand over, and then he had Deacon’s hand between both of his. He feels the ring between their palms and Deacon is _such_ an asshole. 

And he’s frozen in place. 

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. I just... Wanted you to know. That I want you with me, for as long as we can be together.” Robert steps back, his face flushed. He looks so nervous that Deacon feels even worse. 

Deacon wishes he was wearing his glasses because he knows he can’t hide the emotions in his eyes, and he knows MacCready is seeing everything. But he can’t help it. The ring is handcrafted, made from a strip of bullet casing. The edges are folded over and hammered smooth so it doesn’t cut into his skin as he slides it onto his finger. 

It fits, because of course it does. He remembers the yarn, the way MacCready wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“I don’t deserve you,” he says, and he means it. “I thought you wanted—You should have someone like Curie.”

“Except MacCready laughs, and it’s almost bashful. “I would have blown Gage’s head from his shoulders and not blinked. And you would agree it was the right thing to do.”

Deacon shouldn’t have the ring on. He should give it back. “I can’t wear this, when I’m undercover, Robert.”

When he calls MacCready by his given name, it always makes the sniper flush, as if it’s somehow more scandalous than his last name. “That’s why it can come off, Deacon.”

Deacon opens his mouth to insist something else, another reason why this can never actually work, except he doesn’t want to. He looks at MacCready, who still won’t look at him full on but is clearly bracing for a “no.” Or for Deacon to hand the ring back. 

Instead he licks his lips, and it’s such a mistake to do this. This is the Wasteland; MacCready is going to an entire colony of raiders tomorrow. There’s always a chance that Deacon’s next Railroad run will land him in the sights of a Courser. 

“It’s, uh, James. Actually,” he whispers. 

MacCready finally looks at him, and Deacon can know the exact second that he can’t ever look back, when hope begins to flicker across MacCready’s face. “What?” 

“My name. I mean, it’s Deacon now, but...” Deacon doesn’t even remember being James, a man who actually managed a proposal without stumbling around. “If we’re going to do this, you should probably—“

Robert kisses him, hard and demanding, and he’s small but also pushing Deacon against the railing of the bridge like he’s twice as large as he is. 

And then he whispers, “James,” against Deacon’s lips, and maybe Deacon can understand why MacCready gets hot under the collar a little better. 

“I’ve never even told you that I love you,” Deacon whispers.

MacCready kisses him again, hands balling into the fabric of Deacon’s shirt. “Tell me when I get back.” They’re out in the open still, and if this wasn’t the road between two of Nora’s settlements it would be suicide. “Tell me tomorrow. We’ll have time.”

And they both know that’s a lie. 

But Deacon breaks the kiss to nuzzle along MacCready’s jaw, the pulse jumping in the neck. “If I have to have a ring, so do you,” he whispers, and he means ‘yes, I love you, and you still should do better.’

“I see more combat than you.” MacCready moves his hands, tucks his fingers through Deacon’s belt loops. He takes a step back, and maybe Deacon is starting to realize that they’re almost the Red Rocket for a reason. 

“Nora’s door isn’t soundproof?” Deacon can see when he’s beaten, and maybe he doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s easier to take MacCready’s right hand with his left, so they can both feel the ring. 

He’ll find a chain for it in the morning. They both know he can’t keep wearing it.

“It’s fine, but she deserves privacy.” MacCready looks devious in the twilight. “And maybe I don’t want to be quiet.”

And Deacon can respect that. 

-

There are things that Deacon knows about the world. Trusting people is dangerous and will get you killed. He thought it was everyone, but between a smart-mouthed sniper and a pre-War relic, he can admit it was wrong. 

People still can’t keep a fucking secret, because as soon as he comes back to Sanctuary after Robert and Nora head out? Everyone suddenly knows that he and MacCready have... something. That’s defined. The ring is on a leather string around his neck, low enough that no one can see, and Piper still launches herself at him, like they’re close. 

“I told you that you were an idiot,” she says, because apparently literally everyone knew that this was coming except him. 

(Okay, maybe people can keep secrets so long as you’re too up your own ass about emotions.)

The Wasteland will still break your heart, and he starts to feel that when Nora and Robert have been gone for over a month and they hear nothing out of Nuka World one way or another. The outposts are as quiet as can be expected, and they only destroy the one by Tenpines Bluff when they start demanding tribute. 

Deacon is a realist. Yes, he makes a ring for Robert (possibly with a good bit of help from Sturges) and puts it on a second leather strap, but he knows that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a talisman, even if he starts wearing it along with his own. He should expect the Wasteland to demand its pound of flesh. 

And maybe it will, eventually, but five weeks and three days after they leave, Deacon wakes up to Robert sliding out of his duster and ammo belts. He’s thinner now than what he left, with a healing cut over his eye, but he’s alive, smiling at Deacon like he’s the entire world. 

For now, that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I have comments to reply to, and I shall!, but this sort of took over my life for a few days. Thank you for any comments/kudos.


End file.
